


us ones in between

by liketheroad



Category: Disney RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-27
Updated: 2010-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 14:19:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4669796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketheroad/pseuds/liketheroad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>When he'd woken up that day without the sounds of Joe singing in the next room to aid his exit from sleep, without the low, amused chuckle of Nick telling Joe to keep living the dream, keep shooting for the stars, without his brothers teasing each other over the long abandoned dream of being rock stars, Kevin hadn't been surprised. He'd taken a breath and closed his eyes, letting the loss soak in for just one second before picking himself up out of bed and walking out of his room, padding down the halls to their empty bedroom, suspicions confirmed. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	us ones in between

On a hot summer day when Kevin Jonas was twenty years old, he woke up to a house that was missing two of his brothers. 

His parents were shocked, and furious. Frankie was frightened and confused.

Relatives and authorities filtered in and out of the house for weeks. Over and over he heard his parents express their bafflement. Over and over he heard them say to each other, to anyone who would listen, that no one could have predicted this. That none of them could have seen it coming.

Over and over and Kevin always kept his mouth shut, head bowed. Silently letting the lie stand.

It was a lie he could see that his parents believed, deep in their hearts and all the way up through themselves, but believe it though they might, Kevin knew it wasn't true. It wasn't true because he'd known that one morning they would all wake up and find Nick and Joe gone. He'd been waiting for it to happen for months. Sometimes it felt like years.

When he'd woken up that day without the sounds of Joe singing in the next room to aid his exit from sleep, without the low, amused chuckle of Nick telling Joe to keep living the dream, keep shooting for the stars, without his brothers teasing each other over the long abandoned dream of being rock stars, Kevin hadn't been surprised. He'd taken a breath and closed his eyes, letting the loss soak in for just one second before picking himself up out of bed and walking out of his room, padding down the halls to their empty bedroom, suspicions confirmed.

The beds were perfectly made, like they always were, and that more than anything made tears well up in Kevin's eyes, but he bliked them back down and turned away.

Every morning for as long as he could remember, Kevin had passed by their bedroom on the way to the bathroom and seen those two twin beds side by side, made with care. It was the family's easiest secret, the way that no one noticed how identically the corners were made, how obvious the imprints of Nick's hands smoothing the sheets of both beds were. 

It was an absurd thought to have, in that moment, to think for a second that maybe, if someone had said something just once - just put a hand on Nick's shoulder and told him that he didn't have to do that, that he didn't have to follow faithfully half a step behind every one of Joe's movements, quietly cleaning up the mess - maybe then Kevin wouldn't have had to face that morning without him. 

Absurd to think it, to think that anything could have been said, once or over and over again, to stop Nick from going wherever Joe allowed him to follow.

The search went on for months. Sleepless nights and days of walking around what felt like all of New Jersey, plastering posters of Nick and Joe's faces on every available surface. Endless phone calls and strategy meetings, and Kevin had gone along with all of it, even though he knew they'd never find them, not unless they wanted to be found.

People made the mistake of thinking it was Joe, that because he was older he was the one in charge somehow, but Kevin knew his brothers. Maybe better than anyone outside of the whole they made ~~up~~ together. They never shared their secrets with him, not really, but sometimes they'd given him fragments, guarding  themselves with less care in his presence.

So he knew. Knew it was Nicky they needed worry about, to outsmart. Nick's determination, his tenacity, his ruthless attention to perfecting every conceivable detail. There was no finding Nick Jonas if he didn't want to be found, and Kevin saw no reason that he would. He'd already taken everything he needed with him.

\---

It was six months from the day that they left that Kevin got the first e-mail.

It was just one sentence, innocent, almost banal, but reading it sucked all the air out of his chest.

_Saw some great boots today - miss you, love you, sorry_

and below it, __

_ts yb_

He sat there what felt like hours, staring at the screen, heart wanting to leap out of his chest. He tried to calm himself down, to piece out what the letters meant, telling himself not to hope for too much, not to think it could be anything as simple as what he so desperately wanted to believe. 

Talk soon. Your brothers.

\---

Another e-mail came a week later, signed the same way.

It was longer, a rambling discussion of the cheesburgers at an undisclosed diner in an undisclosed state. Kevin read it with his nails digging into his palm, memorizing the words until he could close his eyes and say them over to himself in his mind, catching snatches of Joe's voice laughing in his ear.

\---

There was nothing after that for two months, and Kevin tried not to let the mix of expectation and disappointment show on his face every day. He didn't tell his parents about the e-mails and didn't tell the detective his mother still called every Tuesday to check up on the investigation Kevin knew couldn't be more than an open file on someone's desk by that point.

In March, a third e-mail came, this time clearly written by Nick. It was more straightforward, but also more careful than Joe's. Even fewer details about where they might be, what they might be doing. Just Nick, talking. Telling him they were okay. Telling him they loved him. He'd known, always known, that the _sorry_ in the first e-mail had been Nick's, but it meant something more, to see that written in a real sentence, as obviously Nick's as if he'd actually signed his name to it.

Kevin wanted to write back and tell Nick he forgave him, that it was okay. He knew it wasn't anything in him that made his brothers look only at each other ,knew that it had never been their intention to hurt him, that they hadn't meant to leave him alone. They'd just been born different, both of them, and he'd done his best for as long as he could to make the world a less inhospitable place for them, but their years caught up with them and he'd known they wouldn't stay, wouldn't share the same roof with their father, wouldn't keep pretending to be the people their family expected, required, them to be.

It wasn't Nick's fault he'd said Joe's name first, had wanted and needed Joe like oxygen from the moment he came into the world. 

Just like it wasn't Joe's fault he'd come alive with Nick's birth, like he'd been woken up for the first time, really present and aware in a way he hadn't ever been the first three years he'd been with them. Waiting.

Kevin wanted to write and say that he understood, or at least that he loved them anyway, even if there was something in them he knew he would never, could never, understand. He wanted to, but the sender was blocked, another one of Nick's flawless touches, another perfectly attended to detail. 

So instead he turned off his computer and walked out of his room, down the hall and into their empty bedroom, untouched and dark in their absence. He sat on Joe's bed and looked at Nick's and wondered how many nights in the last few years Nick had actually slept there. He held up a hand in the dark and guessed he wouldn't even need all five fingers.

\---

Joe was fourteen the first time their mother suggested he stop letting Nick crawl into Joe's bed every night instead of his own. For years previous it was something they had done without thinking about it for years, an endless stream of nights spent curled up together, falling asleep while telling each other stories, dreaming the same dreams. 

Kevin can still remember the way the conversation went, that first time. He was in the kitchen, looking for cookies, milk, and he heard her draw Joe aside in the next room, quietly suggesting that maybe it was time for them to sleep in their own beds. He remembers the blank way Joe had asked _why_ , as though the thought had genuinely never occurred to him.

He remembers the silence that followed, stretching long as his mother searched for an answer she didn't seem to know how to articulate, something that was simply expected to be understood falling on deaf ears. 

In the moment, Joe's incomprehension hadn't seemed odd. Not to Kevin. It wasn't that Joe was difficult or obtuse. He was just different. He always had been, and Keven felt certain that he always would have been, even without Nick. Joe didn't understand what people were about, most of the time. He defined things differently, valued them for reasons that were so distinctly his own he was constantly being accused of taking things too far, not paying attention to people's feelings, not behaving. It wasn't that he didn't care about people's feelings, or didn't want to be good. He just so often didn't understand the rules.

And for Nick, Joe's were the only rules that mattered. Nothing else applied, nothing else could be made sense of except the prime directive of _take care of Nicky_. Every other rule of behavior for Joe stemmed from that. Do whatever taking care meant in that particular moment. Make Nick laugh. Make sure Nick knew what swear words meant so he didn't get picked on by the cool kids at school. Make sure Nick was drinking enough, checking his levels enough, eating. Make Nick play basketball until he was so exhausted he could sleep without worrying about what came next, so he didn't spend half the night planning the following day. 

When Nick was first diagnosed, Joe barely let anyone near him. He was tense, prowling the length of their room, guarding the door. Nick was so diminished, vulnerable in a way that was unacceptable to both of them, and they'd locked into each other more than ever before. If there was a turning point, some moment to pick out and name as the one that made their leaving inevitable, Kevin thought it was probably that one. Joe took over, took control of what got through to Nick in a more forceful, organized way, showing responsibility and focus that had amazed their parents, but Kevin hadn't been surprised. He'd just taken it for granted that because it was something Nick needed.  Joe found a way to do what had to be done.

No one had challenged Joe, then. Their parents had been too exhausted, too sick with relief that they'd caught it in time, that Nick wasn't going to slip away to some disease, something prayer couldn't touch. They'd deferred to Joe almost without noticing it, and by the time they came back to themselves enough to try to step in and take care of Nick the way they thought he needed them to, young and coping with a frightening new illness, Nick had just smiled at them, wide and empty, leaning closer to Joe and always telling him first if something was wrong, always turning to him if he was feeling off and needed extra help. Nick started home-school, after that, but it was always Joe he went to with his questions, always Joe who spent hours with him, their heads bent over the same mountain of books. 

Kevin watched all those little moments pileup over the months and years, watched the way both beds were messed up every night, a small concession to their parents, a half hour spent lying across the room from each other talking sleepily with the light off, and then the quiet trip across the room from Nick's bed to Joe's. Just enough to make it okay for their parents to look the other way.

But Kevin had to wonder, now, if maybe it was just that he was the only one paying attention. The only one who somehow thought to look for all the little things that his parents seemed to find so easy not to see. Not until it was far too late to make any difference.

\---

By  fifteen Joe refused to go to church and, after months of yelling, a cold stalemate had settled over the house, over nearly every interaction between Joe and their father. Nick never joined in, not verbally, but he stood silently behind Joe through every argument, arms crossed, face impassive. He continued going to church with the rest of the family - the only time outside of Joe's mandatory attendance at school that he and Joe voluntarily spent apart - but Kevin would catch Nick sometimes, chin propped up on a curled palm, eyes closed. He wasn't sleeping, and the look on his face could easily have been called reverent, but Kevin knew that look well enough to know it had nothing to do with God. It was something else, a quiet calm, almost awe that was reserved only for thoughts of Joe, so stark and bright when he looked at Joe that sometimes Kevin had to turn away, close his eyes against the intimacy of the moment.

\---

When he thought about them now, Kevin could barely remember his brothers as two separate people, but he did his best to remind himself that they actually were. As much as they fought against it, as much as they lived every moment in denial of that simple fact, once upon a time there had just been Joe, and then there was Nick, and one had to come before the other. For three years, Kevin had a brother who was only his, and parents who loved them, who smiled down on them. Kevin remembered when taking care of Joe was his. They were just snatches of memory, but Kevin thought he remembered Joe's first steps, thought he could still hear the way Joe used to say his name, one long syllable, high and happy.

They'd been best friends; they'd shared clothes and toys. There were so many pictures, so many home videos, and it was always Kevin and Joe, smiling like they had no cares in the world. Kevin wished he could remember that time better, wished he could conjure the memories up with the same clarity as the lonely silences in his house now. Wished he could close his eyes and see himself and Joe in an easy time, a simple time, instead of the complicated looks and hidden touches that came unbidden. 

Thinking back, Kevin wondered if Nick had ever been so young. He couldn't remember a Nick without cares, couldn't remember anything but the silent, serious baby who captured all of Joe's attention, endlessly fascinating him just by breathing.

It wasn't that he wished for a time without Nick. Never that. He'd never wished his parents stopped with himself in the first place, and he hadn't been sorry when they'd had Nick, and then Frankie. Kevin loved all his brothers; he was grateful for each of them. But when Nick came he changed Joe in a way that reverberated in every one of them. Nick's birth toppled the balance their family had previously enjoyed, always one parent for each child, two siblings happily employing all of the other's attention. 

After Nick, Kevin started going out of the house more, playing with neighborhood kids, going to the houses of families in their father's congregation. But while Nick wanted to win every race from the minute he learned how to walk, meeting every task, every game with the same fierce determination, he was never much for the company of others. His victories were for himself, or for Joe, trophies and ribbons brought like home like gifts, but that's where it always ended. The more Kevin grew to rely on the friends he made outside of his house, the more Joe and Nick seemed content to turn further into themselves, into each other. They never forcibly excluded him, but he never understood their half formed sentences, couldn't keep up with the jokes that made less and less sense the harder they laughed about them. He would catch Nick looking at him sometimes, expression thoughtful, but Kevin had never known what to do with that look. He'd always just smile uncertainly and Nick would smile back, a different kind of smile, too serious to be rueful, but something close, shaking his head before turning back to Joe. The only time Joe ever turned to Kevin was at the beginning of Nick's dissent into diabetes when Joe was frantic and flailing, reaching out for anyone who might listen.

That was when their parents really lost Joe. When he went to them and told them something was wrong with Nick and they took weeks to listen. Weeks to take him seriously, despite the fact that they knew, or should have known, that the only thing Joe was ever serious about was Nick. 

But even before then there had been tension, fault-lines cracking between them, signs of what was to come. By the time Frankie came along, Joe was already regularly bucking their parents, swearing just loudly enough to be heard, holding onto Nick's hand too long after they said grace, referencing television shows they weren't supposed to watch. It had all seemed innocuous then, innocent enough. Predicable teenage behavior. At least for the most part. Kevin wondered why his parents never thought it was odd, all the subtle and not-so-subtle ways Joe found to involve Nick in his rebellions, but they always seemed to chalk it up to Joe being Joe. Never quite normal, never behaving quite as expected, even when exhibiting the most ordinary and mundane stages of growing up. 

Kevin wondered if maybe he had rebelled more, had found more ways to somehow serve as an example in that regard, maybe Joe would have followed a more conventional path. Drinking or skipping class to smoke behind the school rather than sneaking out so he could bike downtown to buy Nick a new baseball glove or his favorite kind of sugar-free gum, slipping pieces into Nick's back pockets whenever he wasn't looking. 

But conventional was never Joe, and Kevin knew he'd only be fooling himself if he thought anything _he_ could have done would have been enough to sway Joe from any course of action motivated by thoughts of Nick.

\---

Music was the only thing they'd actually needed Kevin for, for awhile. Singing was just something that they did. As a family, in the church, in choir. Singing wasn't something you thought about, or chose. It just was. It was apart of all of them, but almost from the time he could open his mouth Nick's singing was something special. Something to be trained, nourished.

Nick's voice carried them all along, for a time, and as always, Joe was the one caught up most closely in his wake, but one day when he was  thirteen, Kevin picked up a guitar and it just made sense to him. He threw himself into practicing, wanting to learn how to make the instrument sound as beautiful as he knew it could be, as beautiful as Nick's voice, mingled together with Joe's. He practiced enough that he was good, and for a few years Nick and Joe gave Kevin their voices, and they shared something together that belonged to the three of them equally. But the songs were always Nick and Joe's, and long after any thoughts of making it what they really did for living, for their lives, were gone, Kevin kept playing the guitar alone, never getting the sound back, never quite hearing the beauty in the same notes they had once sang to life together. 

Nick kept playing, after his diagnosis, kept singing, kept picking up instruments, facing them with a determined half-smiles, new mountains to climb and then on to the next. The guitar, the piano, drums, the violin. Even the accordion, just to make Joe laugh.

Nick kept playing and they all kept singing, but it was one more thing they stopped doing together, in the end. One more place Nick and Joe ended up going only together.

\---

The last night Nick and Joe slept at home, they slept in separate beds. Kevin knew this because in the middle of the night he ran into Joe in the hallway, both of them half-asleep, padding towards the bathroom on autopilot. Kevin mumbled an apology and quickly stepped back, but Joe stayed close, fingers curling around Kevin's arm.

He smiled at Kevin, the most real smile Kevin had ever seen on Joe's face that wasn't about Nick. Kevin smiled back, and Joe nodded to himself, letting Kevin pass him, and that had been that.

But on his way back from the bathroom Kevin noticed their bedroom door half open, and some combination of curiosity and simple affection had compelled him to lean in, to watch his two younger brothers sleeping as he once had, in younger days when they'd fallen asleep at his sides after hours of reading sheet music or singing together. He expected to see two tussled heads lying on the same pillow, but instead found Joe sleeping alone in his bed, and Nick doing the same, both of them looking all the more out of place for being surrounded by so much empty space between them.

He watched them for a moment or two, until it made his heart hurt too much and then he turned away, closing the door behind him.

It was the last time he saw his brothers for three years.

\---

At 23, Kevin was finishing a degree in music and education, he was living in an apartment with one of his best friends and their bunny Roger, and he had a girlfriend he was pretty sure he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

He had a life, and he was happy in it. Every Sunday he took the train down to his parents house for a long lunch and an afternoon playing board games and catching up. Frankie was getting big, 10 years old and somehow so solid, just this regular kid with a good head on his shoulders, but happy, too, despite everything. The seriousness never seemed to weigh as heavily on Frankie's shoulders as it always had on Nick's. Frankie didn't have Joe to look after, or to take him outside himself, make him laugh, remind him to be a kid once in awhile, but he had friends. He was like Kevin, or so Kevin sometimes allowed himself to think. A normal kid with bunch of regular friends and good taste in shoes.

Frankie never really talked about Nick and Joe, not when their parents were around, but he asked Kevin about them sometimes. Kevin didn't think he did it for any reason worth worrying about, didn't think Frankie could read the awareness on Kevin's face, sometimes, when his parents looked at each other in quiet moments, clearly wondering what happened to them, still feeling that loss every day. Frankie asked Kevin because his parents were still too fragile about it, because they probably always would be. He asked because Kevin was old enough to remember them, to help Frankie call up the few good, clear memories of them he still had. He'd been so young when they left. Six years old and completely devoted to both of them, following them around like a shadow, getting indulgent smiles and piggyback rides for his efforts. Kevin liked to remember those times, maybe best of all, when the four of them could let themselves pretend for awhile that they were all just brothers, that nothing got between any of them, that nothing mattered but the shared blood and love between them.

He still thought about them everyday, still checked his e-mail on his phone or any computer he could get to approximately 11 thousand times a day, hoping for more contact, another short, random update about all the parts of their lives he could never touch. They came with no pattern; sometimes there would be only one or two in a season, then suddenly there would be a flurry, four in a week, two in a day, never with any predictability, beyond the rules in Nick's head. He never wrote back, no where he could write to, but he always imagined what he'd say if he could, the stories he would tell, the questions he would ask.

As carefully as he thought that kind of thing over, and over, in his head, Kevin honestly never expected he'd be given the chance. Nick and Joe were gone, and with their parents still praying for two people who never really existed to come back to them every night, Kevin had been pretty confident they'd stay that way.

Until the day he opened his inbox and found an e-mail with no message, just a subject line that read _Rick's Diner, 23rd street, NY, NY / Sunday 4 pm._ Kevin swore his heart stopped beating for a second, his hand actually flew to his chest, mouthing the words over and over. 

New York. They'd been searching for them for three years and all that time they'd just been a train ride away. 

He was going to kill them.

Well, no. He was going to hug them until they couldn't breathe, but then, let's face it, he was probably going to let go and make sure they were breathing regularly before he stepped back enough to let them return to each other's space.

Jesus. Nick was going to be so tall. What would he even look like now? At 15 he'd been just on the brink of handsome, one foot in the awkwardness of growing up, the other planted firmly in an alarmingly quick assent into adulthood. Kevin remembered freckles and a serious grin. He wondered what Nick's voice would sound like now.

And Joe. He almost laughed to himself, imagining Joe's ridiculous flat-ironed hair and tight pants, his purple shirts and jangled bracelets. There was still a lot of growing up to do between 18 and 21, Kevin knew. How much had Joe changed?

He didn't watn to get too far ahead of himself but it was already way too late. He was going, he'd find a way and then he'd wait for them until they came, no matter how long it took. Even if he was waiting there forever.

\---

Kevin actually thought of himself to be a pretty low-key guy, considering. He liked his life organized, sure, stable, who didn't, but it wasn't like it was completely out of the realm of possibility that he would just spontaneously decide to take a day trip down to New York on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

Apparently his roommate and girlfriend disagreed.

"Dude, it's raining," said Zac, with frankly disproportional distaste. Kevin frowned at him. It wasn't his fault Zac was delicate. It was all the hair product.

"Are you sure you don't want to wait until next weekend when we can go together?" coaxed Danielle with a worried smile. She wasn't a clingy person; she just knew he got lost pretty often. That wasn't Kevin's fault either. He just had a terrible internal compass. Sometimes people were born that way.

He held up his hands and repeated, as he had been for the last hour, "Guys, really. I'll be fine. I'm not wearing my suede shoes, and it's not like I'll melt out there or anything. And I know I've never been there before, but I've got a map." He flapped it a few times for emphasis. "So, really. Don't sweat it. I'll go, I'll have my New York minute, and I'll come back to Jersey, where I'm sure the pizza is still going to be better. Okay?"

Zac and Danielle smiled at each other, fondly, and Kevin reminded himself how lucky he was to have these people. This was his family. 

"Okay babe," Danielle said, getting up to to kiss him on the cheek.

"If you say so bro," Zac said, waiting his turn and then pulling Kevin in for a half hug, hands loosely bound.

Kevin adjusted the strap on his messenger bag and waved at them from a foot out the apartment door. 

"I'll see you when I get back!"

They smiled wider, and waved until he was out of sight.

\---

The train was long, or at least it seemed long. He'd brought a book, thinking he could read, but it turned out trains made him nauseous. Or at least he was blaming the train. Other things may have been contributing to that a bit. 

He had music too, but he couldn't settle on anything, skipping song after song. There didn't seem to be any activity for this, no playlist or reading material to appropriately pass the time while preparing to reunite with the brothers who dropped off the face of the earth three years before. He'd spent the week leading up to the 14th in a panicked fog, unable to focus on anything while trying desperately to appear normal. 

He wasn't even hours away from them, now, and he could barely think. What would he say, what would they be? Would they hug, know what to say to each other? Make awkward smalltalk and then never see each other again? He didn't know if he could stand that. Couldn't bear the thought to seeing them again only to have them disappear out of his life for another three years, or forever. It didn't matter what they were like now, Kevin decided. He would do whatever he had to, fight with everything he had not to lose them again.

\---

The diner was small, and from the outside appeared shabby, but as soon as he was inside Kevin could see why Nick and Joe liked it. It was clean and felt homey; the only waitress working was a middle-aged woman with a rough laugh and a good smile, and she called him _"Sugar_ " when she handed him his menu. Joe had always been a sucker for that kind of thing. 

The menu didn't hurt either. It was nothing but delicious sounding sandwiches and breakfast all day. Kevin was trying to decide between a club house on rye or waffles with strawberries and whipped cream, which the menu promised him was made fresh everyday, when suddenly a finger tapped the top of his menu and when he pulled it away from his face he was looking at Nick and Joe.

He wanted to speak, but even though he came here for them, actually seeing their seeing their faces again robbed the sound from his voice.

His first thought was that he'd been right. Nick was tall now, with broad shoulders and big arms, standing confidently with one arm draped around Joe's still slender shoulders. Joe's hair wasn't straightened anymore, and it was longer than Kevin remembered, falling in gentle waves around his face. They were wearing matching woven leather bracelets on their left wrists. 

They smiled at him, uncertain happiness in Joe's, guarded optimism in Nick's.

Joe said, "Hey, Kev," and slid into the booth across from him, followed immediately by Nick.

Kevin blinked when Nick calmly claimed one of Joe's hands, turning his palm over on the table top and lacing their fingers together. 

He swallowed and tried to say, "Hi, guys," but it came out mostly garbled.

Nick smiled automatically, ducking his head. "Missed you," he offered, as if explaining his lapse in reserve. 

Kevin nodded and tried to stop staring at their linked hands. "Yeah," he said, clearing his throat. "I missed you guys, too." He wanted to say, _we all do_ , but he couldn't bring himself to wipe the smiles off their faces. Not so soon.

Joe's smile diminished anyway. "You got it though, right?" he asked softly.

Kevin was surprised by the question - it was more direct than he'd anticipated, and it gave him more credit than he expected, but he nodded. He looked down at their hands again, pointed this time, lingering too long. "I got it." 

He saw Nick's hand tighten around Joe's, and for his part Joe made no effort to dissuade him. 

"You came, though," Nick said, back to cautious again. Testing.

"Of course I did. You're my brothers." No sense in not putting his cards down on the table. This would either work or it wouldn't, and Kevin thought he might as well figure it out now.

"Did you... you read our e-mails?" 

Kevin nodded at Joe. "Every one. I always deleted them afterward, but yeah. Of course I read them. I wish I could have written back."

Nick looked guilty, but only for an instant, and then it was gone, replaced with a kind of stony conviction. "We had to. Until I was 18."

Kevin could have laughed. He'd been driving himself crazy, trying to figure out what had changed, why they were suddenly reaching out and giving him the chance to reach back, but for all the time he spent obsessing, that simple thought had never occurred to him. Nick wasn't a minor anymore. His life was officially his own. Kevin couldn't make Nick come back home if he tried, even if he brought his parents and a police car.

"I wouldn't have done that," Kevin said without thinking, before he could keep the hurt out of his voice.

"We're sorry," Nick said. He sounded like he meant it.

"I just wanted to talk to you."

Joe winced, and Nick ran a thumb over his knuckles. He said again, "We're sorry. Kevin. Really. But we couldn't take that chance."

"It wouldn't have been a chance. It would have been me. You could have trusted me."

"We did," Joe pipped up, eyes pleading. "See, look!" He waved between them with his free hand. "We're all here together, aren't we? And we wrote you. We trusted you enough to believe you'd want to hear from us."

Something in Joe's voice gave Kevin pause, long enough to realize how big a leap that must have been for them. He took a breath and tried to let the rest of the anger go.

"Okay. Yeah." He ran a hand threw his hair. "Can I... I don't even know. Ask you questions?"

They leaned in closer to each other instinctively, but they nodded too.

"How have you been living? I mean, what are you doing for money? Are you still in school?" Joe had been less than a month out of high school when they left, but Nick had been working his way through the course material for the 10th grade.

"We work," Joe answered, shrugging. "I work at a coffee shop during the day, most nights I work at a restaurant in the Village. Nick's been washing dishes in the kitchen pretty much since I got the job, but he's back in school now."

Nick nodded along, and continued, "I tried to keep up with the material I had left over from... before, but mostly I had to be working. I'm doing a GED program right now though."

Jesus. Nick was one of the smartest kids Kevin had ever known, and together he and Jo were two of the most talented. Washing dishes and working in a coffee shop? This was their life now? But really, what had he expected? It probably could have gone a hell of a lot worse.

"We have an apartment a few blocks away," Joe rushed on, trying to reassure him, maybe. "It's a shitty bachelor, but," he shrugged, eyes darting reflexively towards Nick, "it's home."

Kevin busied himself nodding, trying to think of something to say, but Nick rescued him, asking, "What about you?"

Kevin talked about Danielle and finishing college, about looking for teaching jobs for the fall, about living with Zac. He even pulled out pictures of Roger sitting in various adorable locations throughout their apartment. By the time his speech slowed, they were all smiling.

"It's good Kev," Joe said, nodding. "You did good."

Silence fell sudden and heavy at that, and Kevin just sat and breathed for a long time, looking at his brothers, all grown up.

"Are you happy?" he finally asked, supposing that, in the end, that was the only question that needed to be asked.

They looked back at him for another minute before turning to each other and smiling helplessly, one smile giving strength to the other.

He could still hear the smiles in their voices when they answered, "Yeah, Kevin, we are."

\---

After they ate they walked back to Nick and Joe's apartment and Kevin tried not to blanch. It was more than a few blocks from the diner, and it was kind of... scary. The windows on the first floor had bars, and the door leading into the lobby was metal. There were lots of dents in it.

He felt Nick's gaze on him, and when he looked, Nick's face was defiant, a challenge hanging in the air.

Joe stepped in before either of them could say anything, unlocking the door and describing things in excessive detail, their war with their mail carrier and the way they could get free loads of laundry out of the washing machines in the basement by jiggling the knob just right.

Their apartment was on the second floor. The hallway smelled like cats, but their apartment didn't. Once Joe closed the door behind them, Kevin got it. It was a sketchy building in a neighborhood Kevin wasn't frightened by only because he was from Jersey and you had to have some self-respect about that kind of thing, and more than that - the apartment was so clearly _theirs_ , he instantly felt at home.

There were plants everywhere, hanging from the ceilings and propped on the windowsills, the kitchen was cramped but looked completely functional. The whole place was tiny but well used, it felt cozy, lived in. There were miss-matched rugs spread around the whole of the place, one large room and a tiny bathroom set into the back right corner. There was a couch with an afghan thrown over it, a junky old TV and set away from the makeshift living room there was a bed tucked into the corner adjacent to the dividing wall between the kitchen and the rest of the apartment. Just one bed. Kevin reminded himself he wasn't surprised. There was nothing to be surprised about.

They stood there awkwardly, Nick and Joe watching Kevin take in the apartment, until Joe said, "Want to sit down? We've got... well. The DVD player works,"

Nick snorted. "Mostly."

They shared a commiserating smile, and all Kevin knew was that he didn't want to leave them yet.

"Sure, what movies do you have?"

Their selection wasn't great, but why would it be. They had mostly comedies and a bunch of pirated disks of SNL that Joe told him were from the 90s, back when it was good, or whatever. They settled on a documentary about bears that they explained came for free in the mail, apparently the previous tenant had been a National Geographic subscriber.

Kevin was more of a snapping turtle fan, but he liked knowing that Joe preferred bears. He remembered the year when Joe was 13 and spent three months straight pretending to be a panda bear, shouting at people to get off his bamboo and pretending not to notice the way Nick fell over himself laughing with delight.

Nick and Joe sat tucked up together on one side of the couch, but they were clearly not used to sharing with a third person, because they kept shifting positions, trying to get comfortable. Kevin sat up a little too straight to be comfortable, hands folded in his lap, trying not to watch the way Nick's breath kept huffing at the side of Joe's neck as he fidgeted. Finally they settled, with Joe half in Nick's lap, his back resting against Nick's chest, Nick's right arm securing him there, their legs stretched out, knees touching.

Kevin scrunched his eyes shut, moistening them, and returned his focus to the screen. He listened carefully to the British narrator talk about the fishing practices of grizzly bears.

\---

When the credits rolled, Nick got up to putter around the apartment, mumbling something about making lunches for himself and Joe to take to school and work. Kevin thought maybe that was his cue to leave, but he couldn't bring himself to get up from the couch, couldn't deny his need to stay a little bit longer, to allow himself to feel apart of their lives again, even if it was just through something as simple as watching them go about their nightly routine.

Joe stayed with him on the couch, watching Nick just as closely, a tender half-smile on his face.

Kevin wanted to say something to him, now that they were almost alone, but he couldn't articulate what. Too many things felt like they needed to be said.

Finally Joe turned back to Kevin, his expression growing serious, sad. "Why didn't you ever try to stop me?"

Kevin felt knocked back by the question, but he drew up a breath and reminded himself that he knew the answer. He shrugged a little, not knowing how else to begin. "That would have just made you leave earlier," he stated matter-of-factly.

Joe pulled a thumb up to his mouth, chewing on the cuticle and nodding almost absently, as though he was conceding the question hadn't needed to be asked. "Do you think I'm a terrible person?"

Kevin couldn't imagine asking such a question so casually. Couldn't comprehend having to wonder about something like that. He shook his head. "I just think you're different."

Joe smiled, dark and too knowing, and tossed his head a little in a laugh. "Right."

Nick was still in earshot, the distance between them mostly an illusion, and Kevin, leaning sideways on the couch, could still see him out of the corner of his eye. He was slicing bread methodically, a little too intent on the task.

Kevin sighed. "I'm not saying I really understand it, or that I ever did. I don't know what makes you... need each other the way you do. But there's nothing to be done about it." He reached out and put a hand on Joe's arm, draped across the back of the couch. "I don't have to understand it to see that it's what makes you happy. That has to be enough."

"We can't ever go back. You know that, right?" Joe's eyes were serious.

Kevin squeezed Joe's arm and then withdrew his hand. Nick was back with them, and he slid in between them on the couch, molding his back against Joe's chest. Joe's arms came automatically around Nick, hands folding loosely around his waist, chin coming to rest on his shoulder.

Kevin wished there was anything else to say, but in the end he just nodded and said, "Yeah. I know that."

\---

They hugged goodbye in a little huddle, Nick and Joe still holding onto each other as they pulled him close, hugged him tight. Kevin thought that kind of said it all. But he hugged back as hard as he could, and said, "I love you guys," as he was drawing away.

They nodded and said, "We love you too Kevin."

They walked him to the bus stop and told him how to get back to the train, and before he stepped on Nick handed him a piece of paper and said, "That's our phone number. We... call us sometimes, okay? And," he glanced at Joe, who smiled encouragingly, "come back and visit us, when you can. We. We'd love to see you again."

Kevin gripped the paper so tightly he was afraid he might tear it, and nodded before he could do something more dramatic. "Yeah. I will."

They clapped him on the shoulder, a final goodbye, and he got on the bus without turning back.

When he looked for them out the window, Nick and Joe were still there, two hands linked together, the other two held aloft, waving.


End file.
